As President Obama's administration prepares an executive
order that would seek to alleviate the effects of the infusion of corporate
money into the political system after the Citizens
United decision, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now using his Oversight
Committee power to attack
the draft executive order and preserve the big business interests in loose
campaign financing rules.

The Oversight Committee's ranking member, Rep. Elijah
Cummings (D-MD), sent a letter
to Issa this week criticizing his choice of witnesses for the scheduled hearing
on the executive order. Cummings argued that Issa's witnesses "appear to represent
only one side of the debate" and urged the chairman to call Fred Wertheimer, president of the
campaign finance advocacy group Democracy 21, to testify at the hearing.

Issa's choice of witnesses for his Oversight hearings have
been called into
question before. Predictably, his witnesses for this week's hearing are
equally biased. Politiconoted:

The list of confirmed attendees for
Thursday's joint hearing - entitled "Politicizing Procurement: Would President
Obama's Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Business?" - appears
stocked with witnesses likely to oppose the order, including federal contractor
representatives and advocates for reducing regulation.

Issa's first witness is Alan Chvotkin, the executive vice president
and counsel for Professional Services Council (PSC).
PSC's political action committee gave
Issa $2,000 in the 2010 election cycle and its president, Stan Soloway, has
already publicly attacked the executive order in question. From FederalTimes.com:

Professional Services Council
President Stan Soloway said in a news release that the proposal is based on
"dubious legality and a complete lack of awareness of the realities of the
federal procurement process."

"The draft order says it is
necessary to ensure that politics are not allowed to impair the integrity of
the procurement process," Soloway said.

"But by force-feeding irrelevant
information to government contracting officers, who would otherwise never
consider such factors in a source selection, the rule would actually do
precisely what it is intended to stop - inject politics into the source
selection process," Soloway added.

Next up is D. Mark Renaud, a partner with the Washington, D.C.
law firm Wiley Rein LLP. According to the Wiley Rein website,
Renaud "defends individuals, corporations, candidates and other political
organizations in FEC enforcement actions and other types of campaign finance
litigation" and "advises corporations, nonprofits, trade associations, lobbying
firms, PACs, candidates, leadership PACs and 527s with respect to campaign
finance, lobbying and other political law compliance issues."

Issa's third witness is Bradley Smith, a former advisor to Mitt
Romney, who wrote
that attempts at campaign finance reform are "misguided efforts to change the
system."